Title: Perdido Street Station
Author: China Miéville
Year of publication: 2000
Genre: Mixed — SF Fantasy Horror
My rating: 4.5 stars or A-
New Crobuzon is a sprawling, messy, dark city in which, since I only recently finished reading Peter Ackroyd’s London, I couldn’t help but see the echoes of that great metropolis during the Industrial Revolution. But Miéville’s imaginative power in authentically re-creating such a city in another universe, a city full of non-human races trying to make a living, honestly takes my breath away, and that’s speaking as someone who normally can’t stand a lot of description in her reading.
The story opens with Isaac and his non-human lover, Lin (alien, as in actually alien, not Star Trek alien — she has a giant insect for a head) both receiving unusual commissions. Isaac encounters a Garuda, a winged creature whose wings have been savagely cut off and who wants the renegade scientist to find a way for him to fly again. Lin is introduced to a grotesque mobster boss who wants to be immortalised in her sculptural art. These two early plot threads set in motion the unleashing of a horror upon the city, that Isaac and his friends, as more or less the last men (and women) standing, must try to bring down.
The middle dragged a little for me, as various militia and other groups do battle with the horrors and get their arses handed to them time after time, but it does serve to emphasise the point over and over — these things are hard to kill; this is a real crisis; there are few choices; lives are truly at risk. And when all the little threads gradually introduced over the course of the book tie together for the climax, it is a great ride.
Miéville’s first book was pure horror and it shows; some of the imagery in this book is out-and-out unsettling to the point of have-to-put-book-down-for-a-while-now. And the ending is exceedingly dark, even more so than the rest of the book. But it’s beautifully written and holds the plot threads together superbly.
Verdict
An enthralling, imaginative read. Highly recommended if your tastes run to the dark.
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I greatly admire this novel and have a huge amount of respect for the way China writes. Although it is long and the vocabulary is at times difficult, I read it with complete abandon. The only trouble is, it put me off writing anything for a year because it was so good. It is on a different level from anything I could do. Maybe one day I will resume the novel I was writing when I started Perdido Street Station.
Lord, tell me about it! I kept stopping to wonder why the hell I can’t write like that. I have to keep reminding myself my writing style, interests and usual tastes are pretty much the polar opposite of this book.
Hmm, I don’t like horror at all, but I did enjoy this. The style is fantastic, better than his other books I might say too. But dark? Maybe but I didn’t find it gruesome like so many horror books/films.
Not gruesome, just…unsettling. And everyone’s definition of ‘dark’ is personal; this one, I found dark, especially compared to The City & The City which was at this time the only other one of his I’d read.